Cryptic Studios and Perfect World Entertainment have unleashed
the free to play world of Neverwinter
on the XBox One today. XBox Live Gold members will be able to
download the game and play as soon as they’re finished reading
this article if they want to, but Silver members shouldn’t feel
TOTALLY left out.

XBox Live Silver (free) members can download Neverwinter and
give the MMORPG a try
between now and April 2nd, but after that date if you want to
keep playing you’ll have to pay and upgrade your XBox Live
membership to Gold status.

The console version of Neverwinter comes with all of the
updates up through the Tyranny of Dragons update which includes
the Scourge Warlock class. The Xbox One version of Neverwinter
will also utilize console features including friends list
integration and optimized controls to easily transition the
MMORPG experience from PC to console.

“Neverwinter represents Perfect World Entertainment and
Cryptic’s entrance and dedication to the console market,” said
Bryan Huang, CEO for Perfect World Entertainment. “Our
development team has worked relentlessly to ensure that the
Neverwinter experience lives up to console player’s
expectations for a high-quality free-to-play MMORPG. We’re
excited to welcome players to the Forgotten Realms and continue
to build on their experience as we release updates throughout
the year.”

You can get more information about the XBox One official launch
on the Neverwinter website.

That last bit pokes an interesting hole in the commonly assumed
ratio of spenders vs. non-spenders in free-to-play games. While
the numbers we usually hear are in the 10s or 20s,
percentage-wise — with much lower conversion ratios for
“pick-up-and-drop” mobile games — that figure usually
represents all players of a game throughout its lifetime. A lot
of people might try a F2P game for a couple hours, decide it’s
not for them, and then leave it forever. Should they really be
counted among a game’s “freeloaders,” with the same weight as a
person who plays regularly?

With EEDAR’s numbers, only people who played MOBAs in 2014 are
counted, and they conclude that “46 percent of all MOBA players
never spend money,” which would mean that 54% do spend
money. That last chart would seem to corroborate that
conclusion. If 41% of people spent on skins, than at least that
many spent something on a MOBA in 2014. Some people
might not have bought a skin but paid for one of the other
products, and that would account for the other 13%.

The top 10% might still account for 62% of the revenue for a
MOBA, but hearing that around half of at least semi-active
players toss a few bucks Riot’s/Valve’s/Blizzard’s/Hi-Rez’s way
every now and then seems a little more reasonable to me.

The Skyforge dev team wrote up some extensive notes regarding the feedback
they’ve received in the first few weeks of the game’s beta
test. It contains updates on a lot of the expected topics, like
animations, client optimization, tweaking the Ascension Atlas,
quality-of-life changes, and an explanation for one of
Magicman’s biggest pet peeves: why melee combos are broken so
easily when an enemy dies or moves.

But there are two parts of the writeup that I thought were
unusual and that show a kind of self-awareness that a lot of
games and game developers don’t.

Playing (nice) with others

The shorter of the two is the section titled “Playing with
friends of various Prestige level and adventure difficulty.”
It’s no secret that a lot of games have taken steps to make it
easier for players of various levels to group together. Whether
that’s by upscaling or downscaling character levels or greatly
reducing or outright eliminating vertical progression, it’s
finally becoming obvious to MMO developers that when you get
into a multiplayer game, you might want to actually play it
with your friends or just random other people – not when you
reach max level, but right away.

As such, Skyforge will remove group Prestige requirements for
adventures, allow for different difficulties, and offer rewards
based on personal Prestige levels in a future beta build. It’s
nice that this is being addressed, but it’s still a little
puzzling that it took as long as it did. The explanation for
why this hasn’t been implemented from the start strikes me as a
little dubious:

“As developers we forget about this stuff sometimes, it’s easy
to cheat your character up or down to play together or with
devs, or to test an adventure.”

That would make sense, if you only were ever a developer for a
game and had never, you know, played one. But it’s hard to
imagine someone being a developer who had never had the
experience of playing an MMO and being frustrated by the
inability to group with friends of different levels.

My guess: Some people on the dev team thought it should have
been done, and some didn’t, and, based on beta feedback, the
side in favor won out. But rather than saying, “Some of us
thought keeping players separated was an honestly good idea,”
it’s “Oops! Silly us! We just didn’t think about it.”

Limit brakes

None of this would be a problem if, as every MMO developer
hopes and dreams, all of a game’s players voraciously consume
it, letting it take control of their lives and be their sole
source of entertainment – and where they spend their dollars. A
decade or so ago, with relatively few gaming options, that
might have been how most people played.

But that’s not realistic for a majority of players these days,
and it’s a point that the Skyforge dev team realizes and
addresses in the longest point in its notes. In fact, they
address it in those exact terms when discussing the game’s
semi-controversial weekly limits on currency gains:

It’s amazing to see a dev team acknowledge this phenomenon,
that with more games being available, the chance that one will
become a player’s sole obsession is shrinking every day. Yet
most games are still designed for the “time whales,” an
increasingly smaller percentage of players who are the loudest
and, in F2P games, the ones most likely to be “monetary
whales,” as well. Still, a game admitting that it doesn’t
expect you to give up your life for it is borderline
astonishing.

It’s a variation on the Awful Idea of limited-time MMOs that I had a few
months back, though less restrictive and probably more
palatable than the harsh version I came up with. It still
remains to be seen if it will be accepted by the Skyforge
player base, which is something the dev team admits could be an
issue, though it’s trying to address that.

There has been, and will be some heated debate regarding the
topic, though, if they get the math right, it will only affect
a small number of the most hyperactive players; whether it’s a
good idea to rankle that group is questionable, but it seems to
be a risk the devs are willing to take in order to provide a
better experience for the 90+% of players who won’t run up
against these limits.

In reality, though, establishing limits on how much an account
can earn is present in virtually every MMO – what do you think
weekly raid locks are meant to accomplish? Without those, the
hardest of the hardcore would blow through raids multiple times
and be fully geared in less than a month. It’s not really a new
idea, it’s just being implemented in a different way. Other
MMOs, mostly imported from Asia, have tried stricter systems to
limit gameplay, but I’ve never seen the rationale for it laid
out quite so eloquently.

The Skyforge dev team gets that keeping players clumped
together so they can play together – the goal of an MMO – is a
good thing, even if requires some unorthodox means to do so.
What do you think?

MU Online, Webzen’s free to play
MMORPG, is getting ready to drop its next expansion on
April 7th and in addition to a level cap increase, new server,
and many more features, the expansion also adds a third female
character to the roster in the Grow Lancer.

Season X Part 1 & 2 will bring out the Grow Lancer. Grow
Lancer is a melee class that uses a lance as her main weapon.
Depending on the stats, Grow Lancers can have strong physical
damage or elemental damage, making them diversely proficient in
both hunting and PvP.

Season X Part 1 & 2 will also take players to the 5th
region of the Acheron continent, Nars, where players will be
able to obtain a new type of Muun mount and pentagrams dropped
by the mighty boss, the Core Magriffy. In addition, the
Tormented Square (Battle) will be added. This map is a
different version of the Tormented Square (Survival of the
fittest). Players can earn higher EXP and rare items from the
Chaos Goblins that randomly appears in this area.

Stay tuned, as tomorrow we’ll be posting our interview with
Junhyuk Lim, Chief of the MU Online Studio, where we break down
the expansion and everything MU Online fans can look forward to
experiencing!

The latest update for Blizzard’s free to play MOBA, Heroes of
the Storm, has hit the servers and quite a few changes were
added. First, Sylvanas Windrunner has joined the fray and is
now available in the “Try Me” section of the game’s store.

Usually, new heroes are a big deal in each patch, and on this
front Sylvanas is no slouch, but when that patch also includes
a new battleground, a new hero level cap, and a new Team League
option, heroes can kind of get lost in the extensive patch
notes.

The hero level cap has been raised from 10 to 20 and new
rewards have been added for both hero level and player level
mile markers. The Tomb of the Spider Queen battleground has
also been released for all game modes. This new, three lane map
allows teams to gather gems and turn them into the Spider Queen
to summon Webweavers to wreak havoc on enemy forces in all
lanes.

For those gamers that want to team up with friends, the new
Team League option is worth checking out. You have to be player
level 40 and own at least 10 heroes to create or join a team,
but once created, your dedicated group can compete with other
dedicated groups of similar skill level in ranked competition.

Check out the full patch notes for the full breakdown and
Sylvanas’ skill set.

MMOBomb and My.com have teamed to bring our community an
exciting beta testing opportunity. We have been given rare
beta keys to get you
instant access to this new upcoming MMORPG, Skyforge,
where players could become mighty Gods. To get a exclusive
code, you just need to follow the instructions below:

How to get a beta key:

1. It´s easy, you just need to
Register on MMOBomb and submit your email below to
get free alerts on upcoming giveaways, we promise not to spam
and, of course, you can always “unsubscribe” at any time! If
you already follow MMOBomb giveaways via email you can skip
step 1 and 2.

2. Check your email and locate
the confirmation email. Click on the Confirmation Link in the
Email to Complete Your Sign Up.

3. Complete the following
sentence: “I want to play Skyforge
because…”. Leave your sentence in the comments
below, please make sure you use the email address you signed up
for MMOBomb with. This is really important, if
you do it with another email you won’t be eligible to receive
your prize.

Fans of Aeria Games’ humans and werewolves, first person shooter
game WolfTeam have had a lot to gripe about for some time.
Too many servers, slow matchmaking, and other annoyances made
the game challenging to even play let alone enjoy. Aeria Games
is hoping to fix many of these issues as the free to play game
relaunched today as WolfTeam Reloaded!

As part of this relaunch, Aeria Games has updated the game
servers and merged them down to make finding matches easier,
decrease the time required to take part in events, and has
implemented a brand new competitive event system for clans and
players explore.

New permanent and temporary equipment for multiple characters
will be waiting for players in game during the relaunch period.
Aeria Games also plans to hold weekly in game events that will
reward players with even more goodies and characters to use as
they transform from a human to a werewolf to devour their prey.

If you want to check out WolfTeam Reloaded’s launch, head on
over to the official website to get started.

It takes a while to get going in InnoGames’ Tribal Wars 2, particularly to get a second
village and expand your young empire. Now, InnoGames has made
it easier to get that crucial early start on the game.

Players can now obtain a second village in as little as five
days, just by fulfilling a few basic quests, some of which
require time and some of which require time plus resources.
Without this innovation, it would take up to two weeks to get a
second village and get into the heart of Tribal Wars 2’s
city-conquering gameplay. This second village will be immune
from attack for the first five days of its life, so you don’t
have to worry about it getting squashed before you can even get
going.

Or, to put it another way, nobody can pillage your village and
damage its tillage.

Rise of Incarnates, BANDAI NAMCO’s free to play 2v2 fighting game
available on Steam, released Loki today into their
playable characters line up. If you want to check out what the
jokester has in store, you’ll be able to play as this character
free for a week.

Loki uses an eating mechanic to power up his move set but
overeating can open Loki up to counterattacks. During a match
Loki can sacrifice some time and positioning by eating pizza or
drinking from a giant barrel to increase his secondary meter.
Being “full” means Loki’s abilities hit for more damage, but
pigging out too much will make Loki stun himself.

This isn’t the Loki you may be familiar with though. Rise of
Incarnates uses a grudge that another incarnate, Akhor, has had
against Loki for a long time as the back story for this rotund
fighter. Forced into hiding, Loki soon had a new mission to
join forces with Asha Mehta in her effort to create a world
ruled by incarnates and his own personal quest for vengeance
against Akohr.

Hi-Rez Studios has baked the cake and now it’s time for players
to get a bit of a reward as SMITE, the free to play MOBA,
turns one year old. Hi-Rez Studios has a lot in store to
celebrate from free god offereings to big store discounts and
more, but they run for a limited time so if you’re thinking of
shelling out some cash in SMITE, now may be the best time to do
so.

From now until Friday, March 27th, gem purchases will grant
bonus gems and the God Pack (which includes all current and
future gods) will be priced at $19.99, $10 cheaper than the
normal price point. If you just want new skins for your gods, a
ton of skins are now 50% off. You can scope out the full list
of skins on sale in the official anniversary announcement.

Even if you don’t want to spend money, you’ll still be able to
take advantage of daily log in rewards being doubled until
Sunday, March 29th.

UPDATE: While not noted on the site at the
time of this writing, Hi-Rez Studios’ press release does
confirm that all gods will be free to use this weekend (March
27th-29th).